The Food Network has been sowing its own celebrity chefs for nearly a decade via “Food Network Star,” with the, er, excitable, diner-and-Donkey-Sauce-loving Guy Fieri its most successful ambassador. The 10th season kicks off Sunday at 9 p.m., and one of the contestants is a poised Brigantine personal chef who comes off as anti-Fieri.

Nicole Gaffney, the daughter of a commercial fisherman and the granddaughter of enthusiastic home cooks who schooled her in homestyle Sicilian cooking, specializes in what she calls coastal cuisine: food that delivers big, bright flavors, with a focus on fresh ingredients and simple techniques.

“At the Jersey Shore,” she says in a recent phone interview, “there’s plenty of fresh seafood and the beautiful produce that comes into season in the summer and spring and fall. I try to take advantage of that. When you have really great ingredients, you can let them shine. I don’t think food has to be really, really complicated to be delicious.”

Gaffney grew up around Atlantic City and earned a degree in communications from Louisiana State University, but worked in restaurants, mostly in front of the house, all through college and beyond. Eventually, she got burned out on the long hours and dabbled in modeling and sales, but that didn’t make her happy, either.

“I thought, my passion is clearly in food and I have to find a way to make it work for my lifestyle,” she says. She enrolled at the Academy of the Culinary Arts in Mays Landing and learned about the personal chef industry, opening up her own business, the Dinner Belle Personal Chef Service four years ago.

Gaffney has been a longtime fan of “Food Network Star” but was too gun-shy to apply. Last fall, as she faced her 30s, she decided to give it a whirl. “It was the last year of my 20s, why not just do something crazy,” she thought at the time. “It can’t hurt to make an audition tape and send it and see what happens.”

Unlike other food competition shows, “Food Network Star” is not just about cooking skills, but about being able to relay a culinary point of view and develop a relationship with viewers.

At first, Gaffney was concerned about being labeled the fish girl. “Every single challenge comes up, you have to present yourself in a way that’s reflective of your culinary point of view, and I don’t want to have to make fish in every single challenge,” she says. “When I realized that my background, living at the Jersey Shore, growing up in a family of commercial fishermen and the lifestyle — we throw a line out in the ocean and see if we can catch dinner — that’s not really common in America. It took time to realize that it’s unique to me.”

Her signature dish? Barbecued clams in a spicy, buttery broth, a take on barbecued shrimp, the New Orleans classic. “We don’t get beautiful shrimp that you get down in Louisiana, but we do have great clams,” she says.

Gaffney tried to prepare for the show as best she could, memorizing recipes and culinary ratios, but she quickly discovered there’s only so much one can do. (Previous challenges have ranged from making over kitschy classics such as beef Stroganoff, doing a live demo with deliberate and devious glitches, and opening a restaurant in a single day on a $5,000 budget.) “I’ve never done something that high pressure in my life,” she says. “It’s a million times more nerve-wracking. It’s easy to lose your confidence and start doubting yourself.”

While the show airs, she is still private cheffing — “until something happens to make me not able to do that anymore,” she says carefully. She also writes a blog, toofullforschool.com, and does cooking demos at local food festivals. “I’m open to anything,” she says. “What makes me happiest is being able to share my creativity and my passion for food with other people.”